Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy

by David Gatewood (ed)

  “Oh my God,” said the girl.

  “People take them as souvenirs.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” said Don. “I’ve seen people pull into the parking lot behind and run their cars into the fence and break it into pieces and take a picket. They graffiti them too.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  Don nodded, though he actually liked reading the graffiti on the fence. He had the scrawls memorized by now. “JFK: BEST PRESIDENT EVER.” “In JESUS we TRUST and SO DID JFK.” “We know what did not happen!!” “Government=Lying BITCHES.” “The Driver did it.” “Simon from Oz was here.” “A president lost his life. A nation lost its mind.” “N.W.O. Hit.” “We are the 99%!” “Oswald acted alone.” And his favorite: “RIP KFC,” apparently someone mourning the assassination of Colonel Sanders.

  The girl looked disappointed. “So that’s not the original fence?”

  “No.”

  She frowned, thinking. “And the real killer was up there?”

  “Somewhere in front of the car,” said Don, feeling like he was getting his groove back. “The brain matter went back and to the left, proving a shot from the grassy knoll.”

  “Or the storm drain,” said the hipster.

  “That’s very unlikely,” said Don.

  “Are you kidding? It’s perfect!” The hipster walked into traffic. A car honked, and he shot the finger at it. He knelt and pointed at the rectangular vent of the curbside runoff collector. “The real killer was hiding down there. Like that clown in the Stephen King story?”

  “Pennywise,” said Don, smugly.

  “That’s not just my theory,” said the hipster, retuning to the sidewalk. “Read Jack Brazil.”

  “I have.”

  “My auntie,” said the dowager, “knew the judge who swore in LBJ. And she always said that Lyndon knew more than he let on.”

  “That’s really interesting,” said the girl, sounding helpless. “I can’t keep it all in my head.”

  Don gestured to his display, “Well, everything I talk about can be found on our DVD!”

  “How much?” said the girl.

  “It’s ten.”

  “Oh, I… um… I only have a few dollars for the day.” She began to wander up the hill. The others had stepped back slightly as well, as if the gravity keeping them in orbit had weakened a bit.

  Don reached for the iPad. “I can take credit cards now. Or debit cards. You will never see a clearer copy of the Zapruder footage. And there’s historical documentaries and interviews and…”

  The girl shrugged. “Let me see how much I have. Maybe I’ll come back?”

  “Save your money,” said the hipster. “He doesn’t know shit. Let me give you a tour!”

  The girl shrugged and turned away with a smile. As the boy moved to follow her, his foot caught one leg of the tripod. The display tipped. The poster board caught a breeze. Don threw a hand out to grab it. He lost his grip on the iPad, which bounced away into Elm Street. The wheel of a car clipped it. The tablet somersaulted, made a dramatic U-turn, and clattered toward the opening of the storm drain. Don fell painfully to one knee, reaching. His fingers brushed the glass, but the device teetered and disappeared into the hole.

  “Sorry,” said the hipster with a shrug. He walked off.

  Don threw himself on his belly and hung his head over the curb, but he couldn’t see the iPad at the bottom of the hole. He stuck his arm in and flailed at the air, slapping cold stone. He tried to get his nails under the manhole cover to pry it up, but it was rusted shut. Damn it to hell. He flopped onto the grass and tried not to cry.

  “So,” said the dowager. “You don’t actually have a theory of your own.”

  “No ma’am,” said Don.

  She shook her head and walked off, saying, “Then you shouldn’t waste people’s time.”

  Don balled his fists and wiped his nose. Something stung his upper lip. His hand was crawling with fire ants. He slapped them away, threw himself forward, and tugged at the manhole cover again. It was no use. He stood, knees popping. His poster of autopsy photos had kited away too, sliding into Elm Street. A passing Hyundai drove over the president’s dead face.

  “I got it, man,” said a voice. It was Don’s friend Wexler, the cheerful African-American man who sold Lone Gunman Magazine from a hip satchel. Don and Wex had divided the plaza between them. Don worked the sidewalk south of the headshot; Wexler worked everything north up to Houston Street.

  His friend leapt nimbly into the road, snatched up President Kennedy, and carried him back to safety.

  Don took the poster gratefully. “I lost my new iPad, Wex! It went down the storm drain.”

  “That sucks, man. You ain’t never getting that thing back.”

  “Isn’t there somebody?”

  Wexler shrugged. “Maybe ask in the museum.”

  Don winced. The Depository workers—custodians of the Sixth Floor Museum and the “Oswald acted alone” narrative—had fought a long cold war with the Dealey Plaza vendors—the conspiracy crowd. Neither side trusted the other. “I guess I have to. My daughter’s going to kill me.”

  Wexler nodded. “So, uh, you clearing out for the day then?”

  “Yeah. Take all of Elm. Till I come back at least.”

  Wexler beamed. “Luck to you, man.”

  Don gathered his belongings, then dragged them up the knoll and into the parking lot behind the picket fence. His rusted heap of a truck sat parked just behind, collecting twigs and acorns from the big oak above. He propped Kennedy in the passenger seat, laid the rest of his gear on the floorboards, wrestled the door closed—it was misaligned—and marched off, hitching his pants, wishing he’d worn suspenders, thinking of the pink bike his granddaughter would never ride.

  Five lousy sales. Is that so much to ask?

  The sign read “Dallas County Administration Building,” but no one called it that. This was the Texas Schoolbook Depository. Now and forever. A redheaded security guard stopped him on the steps. Don didn’t know the man’s name. Everybody called him “Irish.” He was a jackass.

  “You know you can’t come in, Don. Not unless you buy something.”

  “I’m not here to use the damn bathroom. I need a favor. My iPad’s gone down the sewer over on Elm Street. Anyone you know can open her up?”

  Irish shrugged. “Well, that’s a new one. Fine. I’ll ask.”

  Don followed Irish up the stairs and into the building. The man shot him a questioning look. “It’s cold,” said Don. “I’m buying a hot chocolate.”

  Irish wagged a finger. “Don’t bother anybody. I’ll be right back.”

  He walked off, leaving Don to wander the faux-marble lobby. A great line of people waited for the elevator to take them up to the sixth floor, to see movies and photos and artifacts and a re-creation of Oswald’s supposed sniper perch—shrine to the Official Story. To Don, they looked like sheep going to slaughter. He paused at the ticket window. The prices had gone up too. Twenty bucks? He shook his head, trying not to do the math. Hundreds of people a day, paying to be bamboozled. It made him sad. He feared for the future of the nation.

  A girl in a red puffball hat—just Mikaya’s age—posed next to a blow-up of JFK’s limousine. Her father told the little princess to “Scootch closer to Jackie and smile,” then raised his camera. Click. Click. Click. Don shuddered and slipped into the museum shop.

  He bought his hot chocolate and wandered the aisles, shaking his head at the price tags, at the tawdry spectacle of it all. Shelves overflowed with novelties and knick-knacks and bric-a-brac and tchotchkes. JFK paper dolls, nineteen ninety-nine plus tax. JFK peanut brittle, six dollars a pound. JFK tree ornaments, thirty bucks each, but half off now for the after-Christmas blowout sale. A glass case contained replicas of Mrs. Kennedy’s jewelry. A hundred bucks for a faux-pearl necklace, thirty for a replica of a brooch in paste. The shop sold all kinds of DVDs, too, at thirty bucks a pop. And books. So many books. He’d read most of them, of c
ourse. Six Seconds in Dallas, Best Evidence, Not In Your Lifetime, High Treason. He’d known many of the authors. Livingstone. Epstein. Mark Richardson, who’d written a definitive eight-hundred-page study of the Tippit shooting and had even been a consultant on Oliver Stone’s JFK, a fact which Mark never hesitated to mention at the LANCER conferences.

  Why don’t I have a book? Don thought. But he knew the answer. The dowager in the plaza had nailed it. It was true. He didn’t have a book because he didn’t have a theory. Not a theory of his own. In all his years of Kennedy assassination research, he’d never discovered a single fact not already documented by others, had never made a single original contribution to the literature. No Second Oswald Theory, no Body-Snatchers-at-Bethesda Theory. No nothin’…

  “Sorry, Don.”

  Don looked up. Irish had returned. “What do you mean, sorry?”

  “Sorry. We can’t help you.”

  “Don’t give me that. You’ve got maintenance crews in this place, and tools. People who know the plaza. Hell, you could help me out if you wanted to.”

  “Fine,” said Irish. “We don’t want to.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Lower your voice.”

  “You can’t do me a favor? Help me get the drain open? Why not?”

  Irish sighed. “Because, frankly, we don’t trust you. You guys love to go poking around in places you’re not allowed. First you want to go up on the roof, then into the railroad towers, then we hear about you people breaking into the Dal-Tex Building…”

  “That was not me.”

  “Well, this sounds like another scheme to do one of your little ‘research projects,’ and we’re sick of it. Sorry you lost your iPad, but maybe it’s a sign, huh?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe you should get a life, okay?”

  Don straightened. “I’m doing important work.”

  “Sure you are.”

  Don waved an arm. “It’s more important than the lie you boys are pushing.”

  Irish frowned. “All you’re doing is spitting on Kennedy’s grave. Waving his autopsy photos at little kids.”

  “I do not.”

  “Show the poor man some fucking respect, okay? Now shoo. Before I’m forced to use my radio.”

  “I respect Kennedy.”

  “No you don’t.” Irish walked away. “You nutcases are a blot on his memory.”

  Don whirled and pushed into the lobby—past a teenager grinning at a machine that for fifty cents would press Kennedy’s face into a flattened penny, obliterating the original head of Abraham Lincoln.

  Don turned back at the museum entrance, hitched his pants, and shouted, “The emperor has no clothes!”

  A hundred amused faces turned to gawk at him. Some laughed behind their hands. One man raised a camera. Click click click.

  Don stomped outside and down the steps. He marched around the corner, unzipped, and pissed on the side of the Depository, turning the orange brick burnt umber. What was this “museum” except a bigger huckster peddling a bigger theory? The Lone Nut Theory. The Magic Bullet Theory. They were no better than he was.

  He sipped his hot chocolate, reluctantly admitting that it was damn good, and fumed all the way back to his truck. He searched his toolbox, looking for something he could use. He found a length of chain, a flashlight, an empty plastic gas can, and some pliers. Nothing to open that manhole.

  He had to face it. The iPad was lost. And the thing had cost Amy a fortune.

  He sank to the ground by a tire of his truck, feeling helpless, staring at a wad of chewing gum on the back of the picket fence, at a little acorn lying by his shoe with its cap blown off.

  An orange scrunchie appeared above the fence line. The Canadian girl. “Oh, look! The old man’s gone. I was aboot to buy a DVD.”

  Don smiled and began to rise. A sale after all. But then a second head joined the first. A head in a ball cap with an image of a braying wolf. “Why the hell would you do that?” said the hipster.

  “I feel sorry for him. Bit of a loser, eh? Can you imagine wasting your life like that? It’s really sad.”

  The ball cap nodded, agreeing. The wolf and the scrunchie walked off together. After a few minutes, Don wiped his cheek and rose to his feet. His body felt worn out and so, so old. He walked down the length of the fence, to where the parking lot ended and the railroad tracks began, the tracks that crossed the triple overpass. He walked out onto the bridge, leaned against the balustrade, and sipped his hot chocolate, his belly pressed to the stone. The wind nipped his cheeks and the sky was gunmetal grey.

  He came here often.

  Dealey Plaza spread out below, the Front Door of Dallas. Three roads—Elm, Main, and Commerce—converged here. Like three rivers joining, flowing downward to disappear beneath Don’s feet. Here at the end of December, the dead grass made the knoll look like the dune of a beach spilling down to river’s edge, to a breaker of sidewalk where people stood throwing their hooks in, fishing for answers. Even the brown stone of the balustrade under his elbows sparkled with encrusted stones and shells like a riverbed. The only splashes of color were the clothes of the fishermen below, the splash of green that was a Texas live oak, and a tiny Christmas tree that sat forlornly in the center of the triangular island between Elm and Main, its tinfoil star quivering in the wind.

  Strange that so much that had made Dallas Dallas had occurred within this little Plaza. The very first home ever built had stood on this spot. A little cabin now moved several blocks away. Dallas was founded here, back in 1841, the same year in which a U. S. President died in office for the very first time: William Henry Harrison, who caught pneumonia at his own inaugural address. Even before the assassination, Don had been familiar with this place. He’d loved history, growing up, and his Ro-Ro had indulged his curiosity.

  She hadn’t lived to see Kennedy killed. Don had been a senior at Sunset High when that happened. They’d sent everyone home from school that day. He’d found his mama weeping on the floor of their living room, surrounded by spilled green stamps, crying: “They’ve killed my Kennedy! They’ve killed my Kennedy!”

  It was inevitable that he’d be drawn back to Dealey Plaza. Over and over. The place had an undertow for him, an inexorable tidal tug. Besides, what else would he have done with a degree in history? He was proud that he hadn’t gone to work in some office, that he’d created his own job. Assassination work was recession-proof. He could never be laid off.

  And he liked being here. It was what he was used to. He’d planted his feet in Dealey Plaza—on that manhole cover below—for thirty years, give or take. This was his home. More than his lonely little apartment in Irving was, for sure. Maybe more than his little brick house on Cleardale had been. His ex-wife had thought so. When he’d left the house, she’d mutter, “Headed home already?” knowing he was Dealey-bound. She’d resented the plaza the way another wife might resent a mistress. Part of why she left him. Other part was the money. Or lack of it.

  The plaza had changed around him over the years, even if he’d stayed pretty much the same. The city had raised lampposts a little, had moved the Stemmons Freeway sign. They did these things to alter the sightlines, of course, to make the research more difficult. There was a lot more landscaping too—holly and dwarf nandina and variegated liriope—but the old pyracantha tree still grew wild with poisonous red berries next to the pedestal where Zapruder had taken his infamous home movie. Don had climbed up on that pedestal many a time. He’d felt like a vulture looming over a kill zone.

  The plaza was his laboratory. He’d stood in the footsteps of every major witness. He’d been Mary Ann Moorman and Jean Hill, Buell Wesley Frazier, Billy Lovelady, Otis Williams, Babushka Lady and Umbrella Man, Emmett Hudson, Charles Brehm. He’d climbed into the railroad tower from which Lee Bowers had seen strange activity behind the picket fence. He’d lain in the grass below the pergola where witnesses once shielded their children from gunfire. He’d sighted Elm fr
om the depository window. He’d been Oswald and Kennedy, he’d been Jackie and Secret Serviceman Clint Hill and Bobby Hargis the motorcycle cop.

  Don glanced upward. The Old Red Courthouse looked like a gingerbread castle at the head of the plaza. Jack Ruby’s jail cell had been up there once, after he’d silenced Oswald. Old Jack had stared out of that window every day. Stared out over the plaza. What kind of life had that been? Don thought he knew, now. He’d been imprisoned here, too, and for longer. Becalmed in this little delta of history, like a boat stuck on a sandbar.

  But there were answers here. He was still sure of it, as much today as when he was a young man. All the answers were here in Dealey Plaza.

  But where?

  A sudden groaning whistle sounded behind Don’s back. A passing train. Painted red, white, and blue, with a single star like the flag of Texas. He turned away from it, waited for the vibration under his feet to subside. The shadow of the train passed. It was going somewhere. Moving on.

  He drained the last of his hot chocolate, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Maybe it was time he moved on too.

  What was the point anymore? He’d found nothing, in all his years of exploration. Nothing new. He’d prospected here, panned these three rivers for knowledge, for the tiniest nugget—and hadn’t found a flake of fool’s gold. Or fool’s silver. Not even enough for a Kennedy half dollar. In all honesty, he was just as bewildered by the events of November 22, 1963, as he’d been at the pimply age of seventeen, full of fire and brimstone and righteous indignation, ready to avenge a slain president.

  “Bit of a loser, eh? Can you imagine wasting your life like that? It’s really sad.”

  The Canadian girl’s eyes had been turquoise, like the waters of the reflecting pool along Houston Street. Like the eyes of his ex-wife, who had staked her claim elsewhere, years ago. Like the eyes of his little granddaughter who deserved a bike from her Grampy-gramps.

  He sighed. He could bear being old, being poor, being alone, if only he could leave something behind to his girls. To his country. Scratch out a nugget of truth—a bright shell, the tiniest pebble—before he went to his grave. Something to show for all this time. For all this river of time. Some discovery of his own, like the skull fragment little Billy Harper had found in the grass—just lying there, days after the assassination. That boy and his skull fragment were in the history books now. Imagine that.